President Joe Biden vowed last week that his Department of Education was primed to attack unfair college admissions practices that favored “legacy” students and those who came from wealthy or powerful families — but he personally helped at least one member of his own family benefit from those practices.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision ending Affirmative Action in the college admissions process, Biden promised to look into “practices like legacy admissions” that he said only served to “expand privilege instead of opportunity.”
But according to a report published Saturday by the Washington Free Beacon, President Biden was part of a concerted effort in 2018 to pressure the president of the prestigious University of Pennsylvania to accept his granddaughter, despite the school’s 5.9% admissions rate and her less-than-stellar grades.
“I applied early decision to Penn today!!” Maisy Biden reportedly texted her father, Hunter Biden, on October 31 of 2018 — and then asked just days later if he could provide an “update” on the status of her application.
“Going to try to see [University of Pennsylvania] Pres GUTMANN tomorrow,” Joe Biden texted Hunter on December 13, and two days later he followed up. “Had a great talk with Guttman [sic]. Maisy still in the game for regular acceptance. But must do well in class this period. It’s real. We should talk about tutors etc starting tomorrow.”
Hunter Biden relayed the news to Maisy, adding that she could potentially elevate her application if her lacrosse coach were to reach out to the coach at Penn and express her interest in playing there as well.
“I also think it would help if you had lax coach talk to their lax coach. Bottom line is that Guttman [sic] made clear that in order for her to explain the 11th grade you had to show improvement in 12th,” Hunter texted on December 15th. “Which is something I think we would have all liked to know form [sic] the start, but in fairness we were much later in the app process than usual and made it look like we weren’t 100% about Penn.”
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Several months later, Joe Biden got good news from the Dean of Admissions — they should expect a call from the University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann before the final acceptance results were posted on March 29th, 2019. Maisy Biden started at Penn that fall.
The Biden family’s ties to Gutmann did not begin there, however — the Penn president had been the one to award then-Vice President Joe Biden with an honorary doctorate in 2013 — and in 2016, she had met with both Joe and Hunter Biden several times. The Free Beacon’s report did not detail what may have happened in those meetings but did note the timing: approximately one year prior to the university’s Penn Biden Center coming to fruition.
And in July of 2021, President Biden appointed Gutmann to a plum ambassadorship — in Germany. She was confirmed by the Senate six months later.